Friday, February 27, 2015

Summary and Reflection

Summary and Reflection:
Enable, Enhance, and Transform: How Technology Can Improve Gifted Students
 Jingping Chen, David Yun Dai, and Yehan Zhou

Summary

In this article “Enable, Enhance, and Transform: How Technology Can Improve Gifted Students.” Chen, Dai, Zhou (2013) presents a conceptual framework of how technology use can enable, enhance, and transform gifted education.  Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) explains the functions of enabling, enhancement, and transformation of technology.  The enabling function of technology increases the capacity of gifted education to reach out not only a larger number of gifted students but also a more diverse range of talented students to further their advancement through activities such as creating online learning communities.  The enhancement function of technology increases the quality of services provided by gifted education through more tailored, authentic learning experiences and better social, pedagogical, and technical support.  And finally, the transformation function of technology reflects a qualitative shift from the cumulated enabling and enhancing effects of technology use in the way gifted education is delivered and received. Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) argue that technological innovations are means to an end and thus in and of themselves will not create changes. They state that more innovative practices of using technology in gifted education are urgently needed, and more systematic, in-depth research is needed to move the field of gifted education to a more contextual, developmental approach (Dai & Renzulli, 2008) and embrace a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset (Dweck, 1999). Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) hope that this enable, enhance, and transform framework can be preliminary step in that direction.

Reflection

            When the school that I am currently teaching at received brand new laptops, I heard that some teachers were actually afraid to bring their students to the lab or even afraid to let their students handle the computer in fear that they will be responsible if the student should break the machine. This article “Enable, Enhance, and Transform: How Technology: How Technology Can Improve Gifted Students” by Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) has really opened up my eyes as to how technology can be used not only for gifted children but in a regular and ESL classroom as well.  A book titled How People Learn, Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) articulated five ways that new technologies can be used in the educational settings. 1) Bringing exciting curricula based on real world problems into the classroom. 2)  Providing scaffolds and tools to enhance learning. 3) Giving students and teachers more opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision. 4) Building local and global communities. 5) Expanding opportunities for teacher learning.

               These are ways that the regular, ESL, and gifted program teachers can integrate technology into their lessons. Currently I am teaching the G.A.T.E (Gifted and Talented Education) program and one of my goals is to prepare my students for the real world through the use of technology and various S.T.E.M activities.  Everything mentioned in the book by Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) are ways that I am currently doing or plan to use in my class for the next few years. The framework for technology should indeed be accessible, flexible, and truly learner centered.  For the past two weeks, I introduced Microsoft Word to my GATE students from K-5th grade.  I showed them how to use word art, paste pictures, create shapes, and how to enlarge font size. Once they understood how not to be afraid to play with the different tabs on Microsoft Word, they began helping each other with minimal help from myself, making it student centered.  

I believe the enable, enhance, and transform framework is the basis to move the field of gifted programs to a more contextual and developmental approach.  The enabling function, or “making things happen”, can indeed prepare my gifted students for college life through the creation of online learning classrooms.  This year, in relation to preparing them for college life, I created a classroom website that will allow me to keep in contact with my students.  They will be able to create their own site as a branch to our class website where they can chat with one another, turn in assignments, provide feedback, etc.

 As for the enhance function, or “making things better”, this is where educators can use various ways to use technology to enrich their curriculum.  Type 1 enrichment is through activities that will not necessarily be covered in a regular classroom, type 2 enrichment is considered group training activities where they use creative thing, problem solving, and critical thinking skills to solve real world issues, and finally type 3 enrichment is when the students pick a topic of interest and create presentations of a tool of their choice. I just recently allowed my students to try out a new presentation tool that they can use in the future besides PowerPoint and they loved it. I introduced an animated presentation tool called Blabberize, after working with the tool I asked them a few questions such as, what can this tool be used for? Where can you use this? Do you see yourself using this in the future? If so, for what?  These types of enrichment definitely goes hand in hand with the S.T.E.M activities I am trying to bring to the classroom. 

Finally, the transformation function, or “making things different” section in this article helped me understand that the tradition of identifying gifted students through general measures of IQ or overall academic achievement from tests are changing. A system called RLS now offers an assessment that is responsive to individual strengths and interests which is an assessment that our gifted program should use because every student performs really well in certain areas.  To this day, the students who are recommended to the gifted program must score at an 80% percentile on the SAT10 to be tested. However, there are many kids who are super bright but they did not make that 80 percentile on the SAT10.  This is considered the traditional method. This year, the gifted program will be using results from the ACT Inspire tests that measures the students’ abilities in a different way. 
Overall, technology is widespread and these three functions of enable, enhance, and transform will be one way to shift the movement of technology within a classroom, more so for gifted students. Personally, these functions will work really well if students in an ESL and regular classroom are given the opportunity. Like Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) mentioned, “technology should be accessible”.  Students need to be situated in this global, high-tech knowledge age, and taking full advantage of technology innovations in education (Bereiter, 2002;Collins &Halverson, 2009; Zhang 2012).  In relation to Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013), technology in itself does not create changes, it is the teacher and the innovation of technology that enable, enhance, and help transform our students for the world they may face.
           


References
Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Pres
Chen, J., Yun Dai, D., & Zhou, Y. (2013). Enable, Enhance, and Transform: How Technology Use Can Improve Gifted Education. Roeper Review, 35(3), 166-176. doi:10.1080/02783193.2013.794892
Collins, A. M., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology: The digital revolution and the schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press
Dai, D. Y., & Renzulli, R. S. (2008). Snowflakes, living systems, and the mystery of giftedness. Gifted Child Quarterly, 52, 114–130
Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press

Zhang, J. (2012). Knowledge construction in a technological platform. In D. Y. Dai (Ed.), Design research on learning and thinking in educational settings: Enhancing intellectual growth and functioning (pp. 201–224). New York, NY: Routledge.

1 comment: